


Minding the Gap

by Blue_Sunshine



Series: The Desert Storm [23]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Friendship, Gen, Korkie Kryze is a Kenobi, Mandalore, Politics, Rattattak, complicated choices, hazards of time travel, independance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29851905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Sunshine/pseuds/Blue_Sunshine
Summary: There is a harrowing art to choosing when to build your bridges, and when to burn them.
Relationships: Ben Naasade/Fay, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze
Series: The Desert Storm [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1311746
Comments: 488
Kudos: 900





	1. Chapter 1

“I would, once again, like to recommend Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi for promotion to Mastery,” Master Windu remarks, for the third time in as many months and at the conclusion of as many missions.

Obi-Wan closes his eyes – to avoid glaring - a placid smile fixed on his face. “This knight, _once again_ , humbly wishes to decline the honor until such time as I feel truly worthy of it.”

Preferably at some point after he’s been knighted for _at least_ a year.

Obi-Wan opens his eyes to glance pleadingly at Master Fay, who titters a quiet laugh but seconds his decision to postpone, thwarting Master Windu once more, as he can’t exactly overrule Obi-Wan’s modest refusal to accept promotion if the rest of the council isn’t in agreement.

Master Windu seems unbothered, as they’ve been playing this game for nearly four months and will likely continue to play it until he either gets bored of it or serious about it, but poor Padawan Rasa – who has just been deemed ready for election to Knighthood following their mission to assist a colony in a peaceful secession for independence and aid them in laying the foundations for said independent governance – looks quite taken aback by the exchange.

She is also the third padawan in as many months and on as many missions to be elected to knighthood after venturing off into the galaxy with him as their partner, and Obi-Wan is not oblivious to _that_ little trend either, though he’s not sure if that’s Master Windu’s machinations or Master Gallia’s.

Or possibly Fay and Master Yaddle’s. They’ve certainly seemed rather pleased to conspire with each other of late.

He’s not sure if the council is sending him with them because the missions are damnably complex (as befitting a test for knighthood) and they’re confident that he is competent enough to make sure they come back in one piece _without_ having to send a master as chaperone, or if they’re sending him with them because they think he has great insight in evaluating his peers, or if he is simply another test of their mettle, given his turbulent luck and general character.

He can’t quite get Padawan – no, _Knight_ Swan’s now - comment out of his head; _“Knight Kenobi is certainly a valuable learning experience, masters.”_

He hadn’t known how to take that comment, and Bultar’s reserved, impassive expression had offered no insight. He _still_ doesn’t know how to take that comment, which is mostly why he can’t seem to forget it, flushing a little at the ears every time.

They’re dismissed shortly thereafter, Padawan Rasa darting off to inform her friends of her impending knighthood ceremony and Obi-Wan off to pass through the archives to see if Bant has set anything aside for him while he was gone. They’ve unearthed a few accounts regarding the Cosmic Force, one of which contained a meditation which he actually finds quite helpful in warding off the intrusiveness with which the Cosmic Force had seeped into his dreams, but the Whills, whatever they are, remain a mystery.

Lady Livion, in a rare moment of scornful generosity, had confirmed that she had heard of them in her own vociferous dive into the Cosmic Force and necromancy (which Obi-Wan has no interest in, thank you very much, and which he wishes to never hear about again, and rather wishes he could forget hearing details about the first time, because Livion had been unsuccessful and because her efforts had resulted in unconscionable cruelty which she took poisonous delight in inflicting upon his psyche) but had never found.

Obi-Wan hasn’t yet been back in temple for four hours when Battlemaster Bondera sends him a missive as to their next training session. Obi-Wan, Depa, and Asajj had all been drafted into providing instruction and practical assistance to the battlemasters until they understood the foundations of Daosaan well enough to teach it themselves with the aid of Obi-Wan’s written codex and training holo’s, and Master Bondera was exceedingly dedicated to the effort.

Obi-Wan could not complain, because being able to pass instruction in Daosaan off to someone else put a great relief on his schedule. He liked teaching, he did, but he liked having time for other activities as well, such as finishing his elective studies, and meditating, and going on missions.

Siri catches him on his way into the refectory while she is on her way out, offering a cheery greeting of “Ex-husband!” to which he flirtatiously replies “Ex-wife!” and sends a nearby gaggle of young disciples into a fit of giggles.

He joins a table of disciples and padawans who are stress-studying for astronavigation over their lunch, and he almost recommends that they visit the star room in the creche and play the ‘guess where this fauna lives’ game with the younglings before he abruptly remembers that the creche is no longer in this temple and that that room no longer exists.

He recommends them to the planetarium instead and explains that there are study-games programmed into the holo-dome that they can make use of in the evenings that are generally much more fun than the datapad programs, because they are a lot more immersive.

Serra Keto and Mavi Var’de accost him on his way back to his quarters, trying to wheedle him into playing _cubikad_ with them and maybe please answering a bet on his marksmanship if he would be so kind as to demonstrate?

They are getting to an age where they should be too dignified to wheedle like that, and Obi-Wan tells them so with a smile on his face. He agrees to play _cubikad_ , but not that right minute, and does not agree to demonstrate his marksmanship. Fett made sure he knew how to handle a rifle – but Ben had raised him to have an aversion to doing so.

Sian has left a new poster on his table, he discovers, as well as an advanced collectors copy of the third book she’s to publish, and Obi-Wan adds it to the shelf next to the first two with a sigh. The artwork looks just a little less like him, this time, so at least there is that.

Padme has sent him a draft copy of one of her more important speeches – a presentation speech to put herself in the running for the next monarchy election – and Obi-Wan hasn’t had time to do more than skim it so far, so he pulls it up for a read and waits to see if he’ll make it to dinner-time before a councilor contacts him or not.

The speech is bold and impassioned, as anyone might expect from such a promising young person, but it has a more reasonable, grounded undercurrent and grasp of real public issues with real, achievable solutions that gives it an invigorating, honest edge above similar powerful but ultimately only _pretty_ speeches her peers might make. Obi-Wan would vote for her.

He tells her as much, and then points out that she uses ‘whereas’ a bit too repetitively, but there is a faint reminiscence of poetry in the way she writes her speeches, and he tells her honestly that she shouldn’t over-polish it to the point that it stops being _her_ speech. He tells her she should trust herself, and others will too.

Padme sends him a sketch of a smiling flower in response and informs him that he’s basically repeated what her mentor has already said and she thanks him for reviewing it and offering his advice anyways.

It takes him a moment, but he second guesses if it was actually Padme who sent the message. The flower, yes, but the missive…He’s getting familiar with Sabe, who is very meticulous and who might be the actual author of those carefully measured out words of gratitude, and Dorme, who is more likely to add a little flair and flourish wherever possible; the two have already agreed to some sort of pact to form a cohort if Padme succeeds in getting elected and they ‘train’ for this by acting like they are all one person and seeing how long they get away with it.

He sends his suspicions along and does not get an immediate reply.

He does not make it to suppertime. Master Gallia has sent back the proposal for outer rim mutual aid that they’ve been working on together yet again, questioning a few of the clauses he added personally and has been amending as he compiles further research. She has reluctantly admitted that the politics of the outer rim are _not_ the politics of the Core, but she requires explanations where they differ to the point that some of his addendums make her lift her brow.

Most of these interactions come down to some variation of her remarking that ‘that was very specific in a very unexpected manner’ and then him explaining why. With citations.

It’s more enjoyable than he would have expected.

Master Gallia also sends him an invitation to dinner, and Obi-Wan easily agrees. He can count on his fingers how many times he has had to either acquire or make dinner for himself while in temple since his knighting, and he isn’t bothered by it in the least.

~*~

Ky Narec is begrudgingly getting used to returning to his quarters to find Asajj and Talon sprawled on a blanket on the floor, and he dreads the day he comes home and accidentally finds them doing something a little more amorous than cuddling in a nest of pillows and snacks with their eyes riveted to yet _another_ cheap holo-drama.

They are both old enough that it would only be expected, after all, and almost too old for him to capable of scolding them for it. This was Asajj’s home too, after all.

For a little while longer, at least – and that – the feeling _that_ inspires makes coming home to find them both lounging together on the floor so much less something he might begrudge.

Today, at least, there is no holo-drama with the volume blaring too loud. Instead, they appear to be studying – Asajj scowling fiercely at mathematical charts and Talon staring so blankly at a datapad that Ky is certain the young man isn’t processing anything on it at all. There is a steaming pot of the sour tea Asajj has become addicted to sitting on the table they’ve pushed aside – which Ky himself cannot stomach for the life of him, not even for politeness sake – a few crumb-littered plates, and several sheets of flimsy, full of carbolite sketches of unfamiliar buildings and people and plants that where no doubt drawn on Talon’s latest mission.

“Talon brought pastries,” Asajj remarks, in lieu of a greeting. “Saved some for you.”

Talon glances up, meets his gaze, sketches his glance towards the container sitting on the counter, and then drops his eyes back down his datapad. He blinks, eyes scanning it, frowns, and then gives up and turns it off and leans over Asajj, who elbows him in the ribs before deciding she does want him close and drags him back into her space.

Ky chuffs a quiet laugh and meanders into the kitchen. He is less begrudgingly becoming fond of the boy, though he isn’t sure how he and Asajj – _work_ , exactly. Talon is fussy, and a little vain, and an unrepentant romantic, and Asajj is – _not_. She’s brash, and pragmatic, and a little bit mean.

Of course, he’s seen the boy with his fellow Nightbrothers, and he concedes that Talon can be more than _a little bit mean_ too, but Talon can also be very sweet, and Asajj –

Ky loves her, but she is not _sweet_.

He fishes a pastry out of the container, a crispy edged, layered thing full of some kind of dense filling that all but falls apart before it reaches his mouth and is unexpectedly and very intensely both smoky and floral.

One of Talon’s more romantic habits, of course, (unfailingly indulged by Master Koon) was bringing back pastries from whichever planet he visited on missions.

Asajj ensures there is _always_ one left for Ky.

He stares down at the countertop.

If Asajj passes her next round of courses, she will just about meet the standard of education for Knighthood under the umbrella of the ExploraCorps.

Ten years on Rattattak had provided a better education than Ky could have hoped for – Asajj was apparently a natural at survivalist courses and both theoretical and field-level resource and risk analysis.

Her connection and understanding of the Force, too, exceeds most of her peers.

There was, however, one glaring concern standing in her way.

Him.

He has been her father as much as her teacher and the Councils greatest concern remains whether or not she can perform her duties as a jedi _without_ him.

Even by new standards, Asajj’s ability to stand independently as a Jedi Knight is a great uncertainty. She’s never had to.

And she won’t be alone, in the field, sure.

But she won’t be with him, either.

It’s a distinction they haven’t tested, and it’s one that worries him. He does not want to hold her back, even as much as it might be something of a shameful relief if she never has to leave his side.

 _He_ hasn’t spent a day without _her_ in over a decade either.

It's a melancholy thing to try and reconcile himself with.

“Master?” she scowls at him, brow scrunched up, winter-pale eyes narrowed. Talon watches him from askance, in that cat-like, slightly avoidant way he had.

Ky frowns back at her for her tone. “What?”

Her gaze narrows a little more. Ky lifts a brow.

He recalls, vividly, her preteen years, when attempts to establish boundaries of new and necessary privacy had resulted in many long, silent, suspicious staring contests.

She never had the patience to outlast him, though.

“Stop that,” she mutters.

“What?” he retorts.

She gives him a very grumpy shrug and then pointedly turns to away to ignore him and whatever it was he was apparently doing.

Ky hides a smile behind another bite of pastry.


	2. Chapter 2

Ben strides into her quarters with the stiffly measured steps of someone doing their very best not to storm about, moves right into the kitchen, starts making tea, stops, sets the teakettle down a tad too hard, and strides across the room to where she is settled on the sofa.

Fay tracks him with a mist-grey gaze, studying the tense line of his brow and the tight, frustrated clench of his jaw, his gaze levelled on the floor to avoid glowering.

He levers himself to his knees and drops his head into her lap, drawing his arms about her waist.

Then her mandalorian jedi lets out a very long sigh, tension shivering across his shoulders, of which she now has a very good view. Fay sets aside her datapad and smooths her fingers into his lovely cinnamon hair.

“Ben?” she queries softly. One of his thumbs brushes back and forth at the low of her back with all the predictability of a metronome, and his breath comes at an equally perfect count.

“I am not angry,” he remarks carefully, eyes still shut, head still pillowed against her lap. “ at anyone in particular.”

He pauses, sighs, and then continues his measured breathing. “That’s a lie. I am very angry at one particular individual, but as to the rest I am only….frustrated. It is not their fault. I knew… I knew this would be difficult. I knew it might be impossible, to find…” he sighs again, and curls tighter against her, and Fay continues carding her fingers through his hair, having only half a clue as to his present struggles.

He has been spending quite some time with Master Yaddle, and Ben has only one real purpose for doing so; the Sith.

Fay has spent a thousand years quietly reassuring herself that the Sith were _gone_. To have discovered, through Ben, that it was a lie… she doesn’t even feel dread, really. Just weariness.

But she has survived the Sith before, and so has he.

She knows first hand that they die just like any other person does. It is a bitter comfort, one that lingers sourly in her heart.

She has spent her own hours with Master Yaddle too, over this. Spent hours telling the Master of Shadows how a jedi must fight a sith; how easy it is, in this, to win every battle and still lose – by losing themselves. How the Sith can lose and still win, by ensuring that the cost of victory destroyed the Jedi, bit by bit, by their own hands and with their own hearts.

How dangerous it was, to even stand across from one of their ilk, when just being in their presence can cause a Jedi harm – not physically, but emotionally and spiritually and psychologically, how the Darkness they’d allowed to consume them will leech through even the strongest defenses with the subtlest of signs, feeding on and feeding into anything and everything it can find, warping your feelings, your thoughts, hazing over memory and foresight alike, twisting your perceptions until you are no longer sure you know yourself.

Ben shifts, pulls back enough to take her hands in his and press and whiskered kiss to the base of one palm. “I’m sorry,” he says, looking up at her, gaze shadowed but sincere. “I didn’t mean to upset you too.”

Fay snorts a little. “Upset fades, Ben. Everything does.”

He blinks and levers himself up. “Oh dear,” he remarks, bracketing her on her sofa with arms and knees. “Now we’re both morose and bitter. That won’t do.”

Fay snorts much more forcibly this time, the corner of her mouth teasing up. “You started it,” she points out.

He affects contrition, pulling her hand up to his mouth again, brushing her knuckles with his lips this time, his brow softening so that the corners of his eyes can crinkle playfully. “My sincerest apologies. I take full responsibility.”

“Do you?” Fay lifts a brow, playful, and they both know it is only a distraction, but sometimes, distractions are exactly how they get through the next few moments, the next hour, the next day.

“I do,” Ben murmurs.

“Hmm… then you owe me, and I _think_ ,” Fay murmurs, hooking him by the collar and pulling him in to press their brows together. “You can start by giving me a kiss and _then_...” she meets his gaze, gleaming in the closeness between them, “ you can finish making the tea you started, and fetch me a cup while you’re at it.”

Ben huffs a laugh against her cheek for the teasing and obliges, tenson seeping out of his frame as he cradles her cheek and leans in. He holds her a minute, though, before he pulls back, cheek resting against cheek, his pulse and his presence, blending into hers until the wild edges of it settle, like a dry, cracking wind calming into a warm breeze.

He presses one last brief kiss to the shell of her ear. “Thank you,” he murmurs, and then gets up to make tea.

Fay hums, and doesn’t say _I love you_.

She does, though, and it scares her.

Love always has.

~*~

“ _Obi-Wan_!” Satine smiles to see him, bright and wide and Obi-Wan feels it melt into his chest from half a galaxy away.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, _I’ve missed you so much_.

They manage a holo-call every other week or so, even if it’s just a few minutes long. More often than not their communications are limited to random thoughts or complaints sent out without much context or need for reply. Most of the time, Obi-Wan hears more from Bo-Katan, in Bo-Katan’s own particular way, than he hears from Satine, but then Bo-Katan wasn’t co-ruler of an entire system.

“Satine,” he feels his own smile brim across his face, unrestrained, and Satine colors faintly, glancing away a tic before meeting his eyes again.

 _“Stop that,”_ she mutters.

“I’ve barely said hello!” Obi-Wan protests, tucked up against the headboard of his bed, free of his boots and armor.

She gives him a narrow look nonetheless, feigning cool reproach, though se appears to struggle at keeping her mouth from breaking out into another smile. She looks a little tired, her face a little thinner, he thinks, but her hair is swept up into her favorite hairpiece, the one with the pale gold glass flowers, with a few artful strands left down to frame her face or trail down her nape, drawing an observers eyes then to the scarring still present at her throat.

“I can’t help it,” Obi-Wan adds, feeling his own smile brighten again. “I’ve just been informed that I’m going to have the opportunity to visit Mandalore.”

Satine sucks in a faint breath, eyes widening, something very vulnerable and hopeful flashing across her face before she calms it, though he can tell she bites the inside of her lip in the effort. “ _When_?”

“In about two weeks,” Obi-Wan says, anticipation curling in his chest that he can already barely contain. The _look_ Master Gallia had given him, when she’d informed him and he’d – well, felt what he felt. Quite loudly. It’s going to be a very trying two weeks of waiting, he thinks. “Officially, Master Gallia and Master Ben are going to be there to negotiate with representatives of the Trade Clans on your edge of the Rim, and unofficially to discuss the _possibility_ of negotiating with _Mand’alor_ on a possible mutual aid agreement along the same vein. I won’t be able to stay, I’m only dropping them off as I am getting my own assignment in a nearby sector, but…”

But he’ll get to be there, for a day at least. He’ll have to chance to actually see her, if she could make the time. He wants to be able to hold her, and bask in her presence in the Force, and tease her soft hair between his fingers, and-

Satine’s brow pinches finely. _“You know if it means he gets more visits from his_ vod _he’s going to agree.”_

Obi-Wan tries to focus. They _are_ in the middle of a conversation.

“You know that, and I know that, and he and Ben know that,” Obi-Wan remarks, “ but all of us have to pretend we don’t know that, because the _Jedi Order_ doesn’t know that, and Jango _is_ the _Mand’alor_. You know he’s going to make it difficult for the Order on principle.”

 _“You mean_ he’s _going to be difficult on principle,”_ Satine sighs, almost fondly aggrieved.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan nods, ruefully amused and rightly so. _He_ wasn’t the one who had to work around it.

Satine ponders that for a moment, and a light dances across her eyes. “ _You know_ ,” she says, her tone lilting into teasing, _“ in more diplomatic matters such as this, it might be_ me _your council ends up dealing with.”_

“In which case I imagine you’ll be difficult on _Mand’alor’s_ behalf,” Obi-Wan huffs, amused.

 _“Why should I have to be? I have Bo-Katan for that,”_ Satine remarks primly, the picture of reserve and innocence and everything cordial and reasonable.

“That- “ Obi-Wan blinks, jaw parting slightly, “ – that’s utterly devious of you. Although I’m not entirely sure that inflicting Bo-Katan on your diplomatic peers doesn’t qualify as extortion.”

 _“I have no idea what you mean,”_ Satine sniffs, as if her eyes aren’t bright with _deviousness_ exactly. _“My sister is a proud representative of Mandalore and it is only proper that she might observe negotiations on behalf of her buir.”_

“I’m not sure she knows what negotiating _is_ , Satine,” Obi-Wan huffs. “Bo-Katan is perhaps the least diplomatic Mandalorian I’ve ever met.”

Considering that they were _Mandalorian’s_ in the first place. And that he knows _Jango Fett_ personally. _And_ Ursa Wren.

Satine does wince faintly at that too apt observation. _“She is,”_ she admits, _“ but that is useful in its own way.”_

“Clearly,” Obi-Wan smirks.

 _“She and Fett have me for diplomacy, don’t they?”_ Satine raises a brow.

“ _Mandalore_ has you,” Obi-Wan expresses softly, something like envy and a lot closer to longing threatening to bleed into his voice. “ And Mandalore is wholly blessed for it.”

Satine stares at him, silver-blue eyes wide open. Her cheeks blush faintly. She glowers. “ _Stop_ _that!”_

Obi-Wan grins cheekily. “Stop _what_?” he teases, enamored.

It’s adorable, he thinks, the way she tries to feign the her flush of embarrassment is actually from anger _._ Her fair complexion really does her no favors. _“Obi-Wan Kenobi-!”_


	3. Chapter 3

_“Lighthawk, please stay in your flight lane.”_

Obi-Wan can’t see the pilot in the smaller vessel that swoops up under him, but the voice on the comm for his security escort sounds awful young for the job.

Obi-Wan isn’t ignoring them, exactly, as he takes a curving sweep around the edges of Sundari, he’s just… taking it in.

It’s been two years now since Sundari was razed down. It’s not really a city anymore, at least, nothing on the scale that it had been. The great dome was never fully rebuilt and likely never will be. The cap of the dome has been removed and left open to the skies, the remainder of walls curving up and in like the petals of some great flower, sheltering the lower foundations - which had been the least damaged during the war - from the ferocious grassland windstorms that come over the wastes. The crystaline towers and plazas he remembers admiring are gone, but so is the scorched rubble and twisted wreckage and the seas of shattered transparisteel shards that had been left of them. What remained has been rebuilt into transport stations and storehouses, marketplaces and lodgings and a few memorial parks, though he can still see some sections that haven’t yet had their turn for reconstruction, standing out like scars.

Sundari is Mandalore’s new trade hub.

It’s also where Jango and Satine shunt their visitors and guests until they decide how better to deal with them.

Obi-Wan doesn’t really fall in that category, but strictly speaking, Master Gallia and Ben aren’t here as guests of Mandalore. They’re here to meet with representatives of the Trade Clans who’ve set up a hub of their own in Sundari, given their new and improved relations with the Mandalorian System and the business to be found here.

 _“Lighthawk?”_ his security escort repeats, tone rather pleading.

Obi-Wan wonders how his ship is flagged in their logs, what the notes attached to the ident might proclaim, smirking slightly to himself, but he takes pity on them.

“Apologies, escort. Complying now.”

He politely ignores the audible sigh of relief.

~*~

Adi Gallia stands on the ramp of Knight Kenobi’s vessel with a strictly neutral expression, observing a less-than-private argument take place between the members of the station security staff, who seem undecided on whether or not their party deserves the same strict scrutiny as their protocols dictate all visitors receive or not.

They’ve been assigned to an open air platform, one of many pads circling around a central tower like the leaves of an inordinately straight beanstalk, all sheer drops and passive security batteries artfully incorporated into a very _mandalorian_ sense of conveniently aesthetic architecture.

Padawan Ventress is restless even when she stands still, hovering on the threshold of the ramp behind Adi, and her glowering scowl probably isn’t helping any, as some of the Mandalorians appear to take offence to it.

Adi does not particularly care which decision they reach, so long as they would, preferably, hurry up and reach one.

She misses Siri. Siri would have given in to impatience and started an argument by now just to get things moving. Asajj Ventress may be similarly… prickly of temper, but while she was more than willing to take on a fight, she was less likely to be the one to out and out start one.

However, Siri was at a stage in her training that she needed experience in operating with other jedi and without her master, so, Adi had elected not to bring her on this mission.

The apprehension of mixing Siri Tachi’s temper with the infamous Mandalorian temper may have had, perhaps, a little to do with it too. Relations between the Mandalore and the Jedi were better than they have been in centuries, but that was not a widespread improvement so much as the personal experience and influence of present leadership. It would still be all too easy to undo what social progress has been made so far, should an incident occur.

Master Naasade emerges side by side with Knight Kenobi, and Adi Gallia forgets, at times, how imposing the two of them – typically so charming and deliberately disarming - really can be, and how easy it was to dismiss that they had sworn themselves to the mandalorian creed as much as the jedi code – or at least, as much as they could without betraying one for the other.

They’ve taken to wearing only their lower vambraces and their greave-boots, most days at the temple. To see them in their kits as they were meant to be worn, helmets and all, gives her momentary pause. Ben is a wash of quiet intensity in jeweled blues and darkened copper layered across softer tones like a desert evening. Obi-Wan is both more striking and more gentle in comparison, crisp white and black shades mellowed by deep, soothing jade green, a pale, soft lilac and shimmering silver, like some verdant spring in the mountains.

The security staff stop arguing, helmets all titling in one direction like a curious warren of Mirialan meer-owls.

Adi tries to banish the thought as soon as it appears, but its too late. It sticks, and now she can’t unimagine the comparison.

Siri would find it hilarious. The Mandalorians, most definitely, would _not_.

Someone finally decides to take charge and strides across the noticeable gap they’d left between them and the ship, armor glinting silver and black, bodysuit a pattern of yellow and red that Adi feels as though she has seen before. They bypass Adi rather rudely to address the two mandalorian jedi, and make a clear and abrupt decision on which of them to speak to.

“N – Kenobi?”

Curiously, it’s not Ben. They seem to stutter trying to say his name, and turn to the younger of the two instead.

Obi-Wan nods, frail daylight flashing over his dark visor and the silver edge around it. “Lieutenant… Var’de?”

 _Var’de_. Adi thinks. Yes. That’s where she’s seen it – that pattern of red and yellow; on Master Drallig’s dubiously acquired second padawan.

The mando snorts. “Close enough, _jetii_. We’re required to register all visitors a security sweep of your vessel.”

“You are welcome to do so,” Obi-Wan replies serenely, his voice a little more clipped in tone through the helmet’s amplifier.

“Right,” the lieutenant mutters, snapping at his team to get to it. “Thing is, your vessel doesn’t match the specs we have for it. Care to explain?”

“It’s been modified,” Obi-Wan replies, stating the obvious and nothing more than that _. Like anything that sits in the hanger at Alderaan – and thus in the sphere of Shmi Skywalker – too long_ , Adi thinks. The woman has Adi’s deepest respect, but she has a tendency to re-engineer mechanical systems and _hyperdrives_ as stress relief, and she also tends to forget to forewarn anyone that she’s done so.

Adi can _feel_ the mando bristle at that pleasant, almost _chipperly_ agreeable tone, the one Obi-Wan - like his master before him - uses to be sarcastic without sounding sarcastic at all and still managing to convey exactly as much sarcasm as he would dearly like to. It’s an infuriating affect, and Adi would _know_.

It is, however, quite amusing on the outside.

It would be more so if she weren’t apprehensive of causing an incident here.

Furthermore, she’s not sure _why_ Knight Kenobi is resorting to such a tactic, given his usual soothing temperament and preference to mediate things calmly, especially here, where tensions are already thick between their peoples.

Then again, he wasn’t the one who felt like he _wanted_ to start an argument. Given the Mandalorian culture and the demeanor of those present, she might even agree that pushing back may be the better tactic to take. She hopes, at least, that he _does_ have such a proper reasoning, when she asks him about his diplomacy later.

“Look, _jetii_ –“ the lieutenant starts, and Adi can feel a little line form in her brow as she starts to frown, but both that warning tone and her own rising apprehension are waylaid by the high whine of a jetpack and the sudden drop of shadow and heat from above.

Boots clunks down on the duracrete, the newcomer’s grey armor edged in white and adorned with gold and the vining engravings of a particular flower. For as lithe as they are, they stalk with the stride of a juggernaut.

“Bo-Katan!” Obi-Wan calls out with a smile in his voice, and that puts Adi at ease, a little, as he steps down off the ramp and pops off his helmet, tucking it under one arm and offering the other to – the _Mand’alor’s_ heir apparent, apparently.

Bo-Katan stops abruptly in front of him and clasps his arm, wrist to elbow briefly before releasing him, her presence calm in the way a grenade is calm, all hard warning and potential combustion.

Then, without a word, she takes a half step back and decks him with a gloved fist.

~*~

Obi-Wan reels, staggering back as his bucket clatters on the ground, registering shock and confusion before pain. But there _is_ pain – kind of a lot, and that makes sense, because his nose is absolutely broken.

 _I shouldn’t have taken my helmet off_ , he thinks wildly.

There is blood – rather all over the place, now. Down his face, down his front, spattering on the duracrete like scattered flowers, slipping through his fingers as he cups the injury.

“What the _fuck_ -“ his voice cracks, strained and incredulous and justifiably a little mad, “ was that for?”

Bo-Katan, having been radiating grim satisfaction, suddenly freezes.

Both of them ignore the alarm around them, security staff palming their blasters, Ben taking a warning step forward, one hand half raised to stop anyone from doing anything foolish, Asajj grabbing her lightsabers and Master Gallia carefully not doing anything that might provoke anyone, though the shock is obvious on her brown face.

Later, he thinks he’ll feel a bit mortified about her first impression here.

“Bo-Katan!” Obi-Wan snaps, feeling his upper lip swelling. His eyes stream even as he blinks furiously, feeling his pulse pound behind them and he tries not to gag as blood trickles down the back of is throat, making him spit.

Her attitude being volatile or not, he deserves an explanation. 

Her stance shifts, angry and guilty and a tiny bit regretful, in a very ‘ _I did not think that through_ ’ and ‘ _I fucked up’_ kind of way, but also with an ‘ _I’m not really sorry’_ sort of feeling. He can _sense_ it, but he deserves to _hear_ it. And why.

Because, seriously, she just _broke his nose_.

And, if he’s not mistaken, tore open his lip and his cheek on her glove.

On her _armored_ glove.

He spits again, swallowing thickly, and his face radiates fresh, hot, red-white pain.

He had thought the two of them had been getting along. Fonder in absence, and all that.

“Y-you’ll figure it out!” She finally snaps out, crossing her arms and refusing to accept fault.

“Was that _really_ necessary?” Ben sighs, moving up beside Obi-Wan now and trying to get a look at the damage, carefully turning his chin.

Obi-Wan doesn’t turn his head for inspection for much as to glare at Ben, because _no_ , in his opinion, getting hit in the face when he hasn’t done anything to provoke such an action is not, in his opinion, in _any way_ necessary.

Not even by mandalorian standards.

Not even by _Bo-Katan_ standards, and Obi-Wan affords Bo-Katan quite a bit of generous leeway on account of being Satine’s sister and having been indoctrinated by _Kyr’stad_.

“Is this a lovers quarrel?” Asajj just _has_ to ask, both peevish and genuinely concerned - and utterly unhelpful whatsoever. It may, however, have been just the thing to break the apprehensive tension around them, shifting it from _imminent-violence_ down to _hostile-and-confused_. Obi-Wan might admit to that later, when this is hopefully retrospectively amusing and not as presently appalling.

“Eugh, _no,_ ” Bo-Katan scoffs, very physically repulsed by that suggestion.

“Absolutely not!” Obi-Wan turns his glare on Asajj, wishing that had sounded more commanding and not come out as ‘ah-v-so-lu-elly naugh-t’, but, well, circumstances. His dathomiri friend can feel his sharp displeasure in the Force, at least.

Asajj shrugs sulkily, glancing away with a touch of embarrassment for having assumed. She clips her sabers back to her belt, though, which is more helpful in further diminishing the likelihood of a very unfortunate and embarrassing firefight.

Obi-Wan should not have risen to the distraction, however, because Ben takes the opportunity to pull his hand away and abruptly reset the break in his nose.

Obi-Wan doesn’t even _try_ not to swear, and he doesn’t care that Master Gallia gives him a displeased look for it.

“Sorry,” Ben mutters, patting his shoulder after having the grace to wipe his hand off on his own tabbards, and not Obi-Wan’s, in spite of the fact that Obi-Wan’s are already dreadfully soiled. It’s Concordian Silk, at least. It _will_ clean out.

“Nng,” Obi-Wan replies, grumpy but grateful. The longer he’d waited to set his nose, the worse it would have been.

This is really not how he’d wanted to be welcomed back to Mandalore.


	4. Chapter 4

Four hours before she actually gets to see his horribly bruised face, Satine is made aware of what occurred upon Obi-Wan’s arrival by being made aware that a holo-vid of her sister sucker punching Satine’s jedi lover is now a thing that exists. Forever.

She’s seen it, in fact, and she was only slightly mollified by the fact that Bo-Katan had at least afforded him the courtesy of a proper greeting first. Had she not, this incident would have far more dire political implications.

Still.

“I’m going to _murder_ her,” Satine had muttered, to the alarm of several aides and a raised brow from Sha’me.

“My sister,” Satine explained, aggrieved.

“Ah,” Sha’me remarked. “So not _really_ , then.”

 _Debatable_ , Satine thinks sourly, once she actually _sees_ her sister, whom, to her credit, had stuck around to face her consequences, watching Satine approach with her helmet in her hands and a sour wince of a grimace on her face.

Satine has allowed her response to the incident simmer at a point of impatient-resignation, but now that Bo-Katan is actually in range, it boils over into a more furious outrage as she corners her in the lobby of the hotel the jedi had been invited to.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Satine hisses, stalking up as her elite unit of personal guards ensures they have privacy, or at least, as much as Satine ever has when she is not behind the fortified walls of family strongholds.

“He got you pregnant _in the middle of a Civil War_. He had it coming,” Bo-Katan mutters sulkily, though she can’t quite meet Satine’s gaze. Apparently, her sister at least realizes how grave her error has been.

“Does _he know_ _why_?” Satine can’t believe her. Satine’s kept this secret since before Korkie was even born, from Obi-Wan and _all of Mandalore_ , and Bo-Katan can’t, apparently, keep it for _five minutes_.

She’s been too scared to see if Obi-Wan has sent her any messages. They’d planned already for her to visit Sundari that evening. For a few hours, at least. She could scrounge, from her relentlessly demanding schedule, at least a few hours, with two weeks to plan for it. He knew she would be there.

“I didn’t tell him!” Bo-Katan hisses defensively, finally meeting Satine glare for glare. “That’s _your_ job.”

Satine clenches a fist. She’s not going to hit her sister, but oh, she has learned to deeply understand the desire to do so.

“Yes, I know, and I planned to! _Ka’ra_ , Bo-Katan, it’s the first time he’s been back in the system! I haven’t even _seen_ him yet!” How her sister survived, when her temper was so far ahead of her _sense_ ….

Satine steps back, takes a breath, and rubs her brow. Her headpiece today is heavy, but she’d been witness to the courts this morning, for the ever-ongoing series of trials, and the heavier headpieces were both statement and reminder. She has been witness now to hundreds of them, and witness now to fourteen executions, in those most severe of cases. Jango doesn’t require her there, for those, but she feels that she cannot agree to sentence them to death and then be too cowardly to watch it be done.

“I had a _plan_ ,” Satine grits her teeth, opening her eyes and pinning Bo-Katan with a furious look.

She had – something like a plan, at least. She’s imagined the conversation a thousand times, if that counts. Not once had her musings involved him having been subject to Bo-Katan’s grievously misplaced sisterly vengeance and the mortifying ordeal of having to apologize for that while trying to admit, as gracefully as she could, to the fact that they had a child together.

She’s been lucky, she thinks, that he hasn’t been back to Mandalore before this. She has come to realize that if she could no more have hidden the secret from him in person than she had been capable of hiding it from Jango Fett.

She as had time now too, to come to terms with the situation. Time for Mandalore to settle and the infant to grow past their first few so terribly fragile months, and then well into the first year. Bo-Katan has sent her packets and packets of holo-pics – well, someone on Bo-Katan’s team has – but Satine has seen Korkie only rarely, up until recently.

Every single time felt like ripping her heart out all over again, and that – that feeling, it had clammed up her throat every time she’s spoken to Obi-Wan in the meantime. It is what has kept her secrets and her fears crowded securely behind her teeth, because _that_ – she could not do that to him. She could not leave him with that truth, that realization, that impossible decision, from half a galaxy away.

Now, instead of some semblance of a calm reunion and a careful confession, she has – _this_ mess.

“Satine?”

She opens her eyes again, having been scowling at her inner thoughts. Bo-Katan’s silver-green eyes are tight with a disgruntled apology and a little bit of guilt. She won’t apologize. She wasn’t in the habit of doing so even before her adoption by Jango Fett, who never apologizes outright.

But she is sorry. Satine can tell that much – not, Satine thinks, so much for what she’s done, but for how it affects Satine.

 _Why_ , Satine thinks bitterly, _must you do all the wrong things for all the right reasons?_

“You’re a terrible sister,” Satine sighs.

“ _Satine_!” Bo-Katan scowls immediately, offended and sharply defensive, which means Satine struck a nerve that _hurt_.

Satine gives her a withering look, and Bo-Katan grinds her jaw before tipping up her chin. It’s a look right out of childhood, from when Bo-Katan was still able to pull the ‘ _I’m the ori’vod’_ card and have it mean something.

Satine almost snorts. “I’ll forgive you later, Bo-Katan. Where is…. where’s Korkie?”

“Where our _Ad’alor_ always is, these days?” Bo-Katan retorts, but something about her shoulders softens, to know that Satine _does_ intend to forgive her. 

Satine does not sigh again. She wants to.

Korkie is, then, with the _Mand’alor_.

Bo-Katan was an excellent guardian but an admittedly terrible parent. Jango Fett, on the other hand, was almost exactly the opposite. He had, surprisingly, exceptional parental instincts, but no grasp whatsoever of the term ‘child endangerment’.

He is, however, the _Mand’alor_ ; more accurately, he is _Mand’alor Jango Fett_ , and he has proven himself in war and contest and vengeance more than any _Mand’alor_ in the last five generations. For anyone who might seek to do her baby harm, he is the ultimate deterrent.

It does, however, help her nerves that Korkie, now weaned and toddling and big enough to wear a jeweled, light-weight child’s cuirass, has one which is at all times embedded with an active personal protective shield.

And that Jango has a most capable and well equipped contingent of bodyguards whom she has personally had a hand in selecting and whom hold a deep desire to prove that they are so, since they are more an accessory to the _Mand'alor_ than anything else. 

It does not stop the child from teething on plasma clips and trying to pull vibroknives from boots and belts to play with. But that is, Satine supposes, the trial faced by most all mandalorian _buir_ with their young _ade_.

Jango _has_ been spotted with the child by the public several times – he’s made no secret of it, now that he’s decided to all but adopt Satine’s heir himself, which she has… mixed feelings on, even if it has allowed her to see more of Korkie recently (which she suspects may have been the point, and the kindness of it aches).

He hasn’t, however, issued any sort of statement on the matter. No one has. The most popular rumor is that the child was Bo-Katan’s, by way, most assume, of Pre Vizla. Pre Vizla, who is still more or less a hostage representative of his clan, has wisely kept his mouth shut and neither confirmed nor denied any speculation.

Eventually, speculation will wane. Korkie will grow and everyone will get used to the idea. It won’t matter so much where the child came from, so much as the fact that the child is here and being raised as an heir to Mandalore. It was their way, after all.

Satine clings to that, hope lodged hard in her throat, that eventually it won’t matter. Eventually it will be safe, eventually it won’t be so risky to have such a soft, obvious target for anyone seeking to influence or undermine or overthrow the young pacifistic _Jorad’alor_ , and she can take that child and claim Korkie as _hers_.

 _Mine_.

 _Mine, mine_ , she thinks.

 _And Obi-Wan’s_.

She takes a deep breath, bracing herself as her stomach tightens into knots, and goes to find him.

~*~

Given that Obi-Wan and Asajj will not be staying, and that the Order had an increasingly limited budget, their accommodations consists of a single modest suite, which has a single bedroom with two sleeping berths and a cozy sitting area consisting of a triangular arrangement of couches around a triangular table and a not unpleasant view of the plaza outside. Adi has already taken over the table, arranging data-pads and flimsy notes and accessing the holotable function for the hotel guidance and scheduling systems.

Ben lingers long enough to see to it that Obi-Wan gets cleaned up and that Adi gets served tea and that Asajj gets warned not to try shadow-walking through the hotel nor to try out-blustering any aggressiveness she might encounter among anyone clearly mandalorian.

“I’m not that bad!” Asajj insisted.

“ _Mando’ade_ are,” Ben had replied.

Now, he takes the opportunity to slip away as more or less discreetly as possible. He slips into the bedroom and interrupts Obi-Wan’s meditation with a gentle mental tug, wincing faintly at the vivid bruises that have bloomed across his face. He hadn’t bothered with bacta, considering the expense of it, but even with healing meditations it’s going to take a few days for the bruising to fade.

“I’m, ah…” Ben gestures, vaguely, and Obi-Wan grins as best he can with his face in this state, licking at the cut in his upper lip when it cracks.

“Have you ever shadow-walked that far?” Obi-Wan inquires.

“You have absolutely no place to be lecturing me on shadow-walking, I believe.” Ben sniffs.

“Oh, I know, but still,” Obi-Wan remarks sheepishly. “It’s not that I don’t think you have the range, Ben, I was just curious. Sundari to Keldabe is not an insignificant distance.”

“Sian crossed a planetary body at sixteen,” Ben points out. And she was still only a padawan.

“Smaller planet,” Obi-Wan counters, “ and….” His brow pinches a little. “Focus on skimming over the surface, yeah?”

Ben pauses. “Explain that?” he requests.

“Shadow-Walking into a planet, or, or _through_ it, I suppose, is… risky. Planets have their own sort of…sapience, in the Force,” Obi-Wan explains, and Ben nods, because this is generally agreed upon by most Jedi, though there are so, so many arguments as to consciousness versus intelligence versus presence versus impression and so on and so forth. “Shadow-Walking into the body of one is very, very much registered as trespassing, in that sense, and the last time I did it, I think I was really very lucky that my trespass was forgiven. Concordia doesn’t have much of a presence at all, and it still nearly sucked me in, and it definitely _spat_ us out.”

Ben had not been in the headspace at the time to make any sort of personal register to that particular experience, so he’s rather glad to know.

He _does_ recall Jango having given Obi-Wan a very violent shaking, though, and supposes it was deserved after all, no matter how grateful Ben was for his foolish padawans courage and tenacity and disobedience in getting him out of his prison.

“Noted,” Ben says simply. “Thank you.”

“Tell Jango I said hello.” Obi-Wan nods, smiling more serenely. “Hopefully I’ll get to see him later.”

“Tell Satine likewise,” Ben replies, and nods before making his departure through the shadow of a drape.


	5. Chapter 5

There is a memorial erected in the plaza outside Keldabe Stronghold, out of the shadow of which Ben steps. A towering ring of three amethyst pillars, carved flat and polished at the bottom and left jagged and raw at the top, each engraved.

_Manda._

_Manda’yaim._

_Mando’ade._

In the center of these pillars of mourning is the grand, imposing metal statue of a beautifully detailed but viciously snarling mythosaur, attacking its own flesh.

_Our Spirit._

_Our Home._

_Our People._

The mythosaur is painted in varying shades of maroon, the gruesome wounds all brilliantly, vibrantly gold; power bleeding vengeance as the symbol of Mandalore tears itself apart.

The entire things rests in what might, on any other world, or for any other statement, have been a garden bed. But there are no flowers here, no promises, no growth. The bed is nothing but congealed ash and bits of rubble and sharply reflective shards of broken transparisteel.

Ben gazes at it for a moment, finding it fitting, and then turns towards the rebuilt walls of Keldabe Stronghold, the wide steps lined with the white lilies the memorial lacked, the tall gates and guardposts all a heavy black, the actual entrance a thing of gleaming _beskar_ and mosaic transparisteel in vibrant, passionate colors.

Rain plinks off his helmet as he approaches, the sky a swollen grey but the general feel of the city one of thrumming, slightly chaotic energy, so much more positive than the palpable struggle and strife that had been so prevalent when last he was here.

Keldabe Stronghold both is and is not a public building, and Ben walks through two discreet scanners and under one cannon-post to enter the atrium, where he is then _officially_ checked over by the guards and asked to state his business.

Or, well, should have been asked, and then likely escorted to wherever it was he had business being, but apparently he’s been recognized, and they rather skip past that and assume he’s here to see the _Mand’alor_.

They’re not wrong.

The walls feel new. Ben did not have the opportunity to visit the stronghold before its destruction, but he can feel the age in the foundations, the history so once carefully preserved and wrought into any renovations made over the centuries. Compared to those deep impressions, the halls around him nearly echo with silence, no matter how close they were to the original, no matter how much care and detail was given to the artistry and strength of them. Somewhere in between the old and the new, however, is the memory of fire and blood, like a lingering wisp of smoke.

The closer they get to the more private areas of the stronghold, however, the less sterile the place feels. Jango has already made his own impressions, scattered yet bold as they are for his infrequent presence, but more than that, he has carried the memories of the old halls with him, drawing them stubbornly back up to linger. He’s carried his ghosts with him, setting them back into place as a strange comfort.

They eventually find Jango in a private inner courtyard, one with a couple ornamental trees and a pond for interest and a wide cleared space for sparring. His silver on grey armor gleams even in faint light, but it’s the bolder maroon pieces and the fiery vambraces that separate him out from his closest attendants, who wear his colors just as proudly.

For Ben, of course, his presence is glaringly obvious even before he comes into view, but Ben’s escort very much wants to be seen as competent at their job, so Ben allows them to lead.

Jango is standing just out of reach of the rain under a covered walkway and scowling at his comm. He dismisses the call, however, the moment he registers who it is walking up to him.

His expression does something complicated before he crosses his arms and huffs at Ben. “He shouldn’t have taken his helmet off for Bo-Katan.”

Clearly, he’s speaking of Obi-Wan, and the… incident.

“I’m sure he’ll remember that next time,” Ben drawls back, tone dry. “Your daughter is a menace. He was actually _pleased_ to see her.”

Jango snorts at that.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to explain what that was all about?” Ben inquires, because Bo-Katan had very much declined to do so, and then stalked off, though she hadn’t ever exactly _left_. In so far as he could sense, she’d still been lurking in the hotel when Ben had departed.

Jango draws in a breath and his lips thin, a strange sort of tension filling his gaze, something uncomfortable and patently irritated.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Jango mutters, shaking his head. “But I am allowed to now, yes.”

“Allowed?” Ben lifts a brow, wondering what, exactly, could possibly have occurred between Bo-Katan and Obi-Wan that the matter is so _sensitive_.

There is, at that moment, however, a shrill, jubilant shriek, and Ben turns to watch a small child thunder across the courtyard through a wide, shallow puddle, chubby little hands holding Jango’s helmet on their too-small head as they flee from the careful escort of an armored attendant. Water slaps away from their little booted feet, soaking their pale green clothes, and the child abruptly trips, to the lurching dismay of everyone observing.

 _“Ad’alor!”_ several persons gasp, and Jango stalks over, grabs the child securely by the back of their coat, and lifts them from the ground. Jango’s helmet falls off their head, rolling in the puddle before one of the guards swoops in to rescue it, and the child wriggles, meeting the _Mand’alor’s_ gaze in wide-eyed shock, sopping wet and dripping as he lifts them high enough to be face to face.

Jango lifts a brow.

The toddler lets out an experimental whimper, and Jango scoffs, turning his face away. “You’re fine.”

He also glares at everyone who lurched forward so dramatically, and they melt back to their positions as the _Manda’lor_ swoops the toddler into the seat of his arms and stalks back out of the rain. The only person who follows is the one holding the _Mand’alor’s_ helmet, which their _ad’alor_ reaches for once it’s in sight again, apparently having decided the fall was not worth crying over.

“ _Ad’alor_?” Ben inquires, inspecting the toddler with blatant curiosity, though this is made difficult by a sudden bout of shyness, as they hide their face against Jango’s shoulder, clutching tightly to the _Mand’alor’s_ bucket. Their hair is a damp snarl of pale silver-blonde, suggesting a Kalevalen heritage, though the toddler’s skin is more honey-toned – if a bit rosy with the cold - than the typical Kalevalan fairness, their age anywhere from one year to two, if he had to guess. “You adopted again?”

Ben isn’t sure if he should be surprised or not.

Jango narrows his eyes at Ben, and Ben lifts a brow. “Am I wrong, then?” Ben asks.

“What good is the fucking Force…” Jango growls to the heavens, and then glowers at his _vod_ and thrusts the child, helmet and all, in his direction. “Ben, meet Korkie Kryze, Princess of Mandalore.”

~*~

Satine is so anxious and tensely, desperately prepared to see Obi-Wan that at first she does not know how to react when it is not Obi-Wan who opens the door, but a taller, chalk pale padawan with dark blue hair and a very suspicious expression.

“….”

To be fair, the other padawan doesn’t seem to know what to do with her either. Bright, winter-pale blue eyes narrow, and then she turns back towards the room behind her. “Obi-Wan!”

“Padawan Ventress, you _could_ invite her in yourself,” another female voice calls, this one rich and low and a touch wry, compared to Padawan Ventress’s cool, almost raspy tones.

Padawan Ventress – _Asajj_ , Satine thinks, if she’s remembering Obi-Wan’s stories correctly – looks back skeptically and shrugs. “I guess.”

Satine takes that as invitation. “Thank you,” she remarks politely, and steps inside and takes in a jedi whose face she does know, and whose reputation she personally respects. “Master Gallia,” she greets, as Obi-Wan appears in the door leading to what must be the bedroom, and-

 _Oh, Bo-Katan_.

Satine is aggrieved anew, even as Obi-Wan smiles sheepishly, and then winces.

“ _Jorad’alor_ ,” Master Gallia returns her greeting with a perfectly neutral and _not-at-all_ teasing tone, and Satine almost flushes at having been so easily distracted from courtesy.

It was just.

 _Obi-Wan_.

She can barely contain the feeling in her chest, which threatens to spill out at the slightest lapse, either as joy or tears.

She is not so fragile, though, and not so free.

“I wish you hadn’t taken your helmet off,” she remarks, dismissing herself from courtesy with a gentle nod in the jedi master’s direction and stepping up to Obi-Wan, stopping short only on the sharp, disciplined truth that she can never truly, in fact, entirely dismiss courtesy. They are _not_ alone, and she _is_ Mandalore’s _Jorad’alor_.

“So do I,” Obi-Wan replies, ruefully amused, gaze lovingly roaming her face and then glancing at Master Gallia, who politely went back to her reading, and Padawan Ventress, who was trying to find something to pretend to be occupied with, by all appearances. “Would your team mind terribly if we took our leave?” Obi-Wan asks quietly.

“Considering you once had their job and did it quite well, no, they should not,” Satine replies, thinking her security detail could hardly complain and that she dearly, direly wishes that they could have some privacy.

“Your opinion or theirs?” Obi-Wan teases, lifting a hand a briefly brushing back a strand of hair by her neck, fingertip tracing one of the scars there. “I didn’t do a perfect job.”

“If you’re not leaving, I am,” Padawan Ventress interrupts them. “Contain your mushy happiness, please.”

Obi-Wan sighs, and Satine lifts a brow at him, mouthing ‘ _mushy happiness’_. His ears flush red, and he does look it – _happy_ , bruises and all. It makes a warmth suffuse through her, from the flat of her feet to the crown of her head, like she could glow with it – this ferocious care for him - that feeling trying to claw its way out of her carefully guarded heart all the more.

Padawan Ventress makes a pointedly loud, disgusted grumble.

“We’re going, we’re going,” Obi-Wan insists. “You’re a terrible friend.”

Padawan Ventress makes a face at him, and he turns his face away to roll his eyes where Master Gallia can’t possibly see him.

Master Gallia, Satine notes, glances at them from askance and then rolls _her_ eyes at their bickering childishness.

Satine briefly conveys to her bodyguard that she would be quite literally vanishing and assures them that she will return promptly back to their care as scheduled. Obi-Wan offers them the location of his ship, but promises he can have her right back here without fail.

They resist, arguing as to the safety of the _Jorad’alor_ travelling alone with him, until they finally understand that the means of travel is, in fact, undiscoverable and unassailable.

“I wish we _could_ go on an actual date,” Obi-Wan remarks, sighing a little when they step into the dimly lit cargo bay of his beloved _Lighthawk_. “This isn’t the most romantic environment.”

“It could do with some artwork,” Satine remarks, teasing a little, “ but I do like this ship, you know.” She had lived here for months, once. She’d nearly died here, too, but she doesn’t remember terribly much of that. This ship is the place where she had fallen in love with him, and where she had forged the way forward for her people. It was familiar and safe – qualities so scarcely found in her life now - and she could love it for that alone, bare durasteel bulkheads and hard bunks or not. “Besides,” she turns towards him, bold enough now to smile freely. “ it allows us privacy, and I have so very little of that.”

He huffs agreeably, nodding at that as the very air around him seems to relax. Perhaps he was nervous too, finally being face to face again.

Her sister decking him upon arrival probably had not helped.

Satine reaches up to trace the cuts on his face, wincing for them. His eyes are blooming purple and red, his nose mottled with color and small cuts; a bigger cut in his cheek and on his lip, where the armored glove had caught his skin. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Obi-Wan huffs a laugh. “Bo-Katan is _Bo-Katan_.”

He reaches up and clasps her hand, fingers warm and gentle, turning it over to put careful, feather-light kisses on her palms.

Satine draws in a shaky breath, almost dizzy, and certain she is going to cry.

“Obi-Wan, I need to… talk to you,” she declares, airless and upset, even as the evidence is right in front of her that this is _Obi-Wan Kenobi_ , that he is gentle and kind and even if she breaks his heart with what she has done, he _won’t_ hate her for this.

He stops and looks up, blue-grey eyes keen and full of concern, scanning her face. He lowers her hand softly, but doesn’t let go. “Alright,” he asserts, tugging her gently to follow him. “Do you want tea?” he offers.

“That would…” Satine swallows thickly, firming up her composure. “I would appreciate that, yes.”

She almost winces at her voice, which comes out in the neutral, courteous tones she uses on clan representatives she isn’t familiar with to avoid making much of an impression until she’s decided which impression she needs to make.

He looks at her again, a glance that makes her freeze, that makes her heart pound, so clear and intense she could swear he could see her down to her marrow, but he just smiles gently and leads her up to the galley.

Satine forces herself to breathe and follows him.

“This has to do with why your sister hit me, doesn’t it?” he asks, climbing the ladder, so she doesn’t have to bear with him looking at her while he does. Satine covers her face with her hands and tries not to sigh as aggravation surges back up.

“Yes,” she replies, tone unfairly clipped due to her anger at her sister. “This has to do with why Bo-Katan hit you. She – should not have. I’m sorry. That was not – I’m sorry,” Satine sighs.

“You don’t have to apologize for her,” he laughs. “It’s alright.”

 _I really feel that I do_ , Satine thinks, following him up the ladder, _and no it isn’t_.

Satine bites the inside of her lip, and wishes she weren’t so absolutely certain that _she_ is going to be the one to hurt him far worse. The bruises would just be insult to injury.

He’s hardly alone in being at fault for the two of them not being as careful as they should have been. Satine had been sure, so long as she did not experience a menstrual cycle, that her hormone control was still effective. The window between the effectiveness wearing off and the start of her next cycle was typically small. She should have given the length of time since her last dose more thought, perhaps she could have been tracking it better, but she had been _in the middle of a civil war_ and had far greater concerns on her mind. Even still, they _had_ been careful. Perhaps only once or twice not as careful as they really ought to have been.

So whatever slight or fault Bo-Katan perceived – Satine could care less about it. If Bo-Katan wanted to play _ori’vod_ after walking away from her family – this was _not_ the way to do it. Satine outgrew her big sister and the need for her protection years ago. She had had to.

She settles at the counter in the galley, and meets his gaze every time he looks at her, as he goes about starting the auto-kettle and pulling together a mix of tea that fills the air with soft, slightly spicy fragrance.

The smell of it sooths her stomach, churning with guilt and tension that holds her shoulders stiff and makes her heart race in her chest.

When he pours it, she takes her cup before its properly steeped, letting the heat sing against her palms and leech through to her bones. She breathes in deep of the steam, trying to guess what he’s mixed together this time to distract herself, and feels her nerves calm as a hazy sense of comfort and safety slowly seems to envelope her.

“Satine,” he says softly, that feeling no doubt at least in part his doing, “ it’s okay. Whatever it is, I promise.”

He’s earnest in that. A little nervous, maybe, but so _sure_ underneath. Satine can’t afford to stop and consider how young she really is, for her position, for her responsibilities, but – they were so _young_. Young enough that she can look at him and see how much he’s _grown_ , young enough to look at herself and see the softness still fading from her face.

He’s a full Jedi Knight now, and it shows in the way he moves through the world. She wonders if she seems nearly as fulfilled, in his eyes, for the years that have passed between them. Some days she feels the loyalty of her people like a fire in her blood, as if there is nothing they cannot accomplish together – as if there is nothing _she_ cannot accomplish. Other days she still feels like a girl trying to live up to the legacy her father left her, the mantle almost too much to bear.

Satine closes her eyes, terribly, horribly guilty.

She loves him because he is so irrepressibly _good_ , but she also sometimes hates him for it, when her own thoughts and feelings can seem so ugly in comparison.

She parts her lips, takes a breath, and nothing comes out.

She has ended war with her words. She has reclaimed the heart of Mandalore, with her voice and with a talent for always having the right thing to say ready in her heart.

She cannot find, for him, the right thing to say.

Her eyes burn, still closed, as she searches herself and the thousand upon a thousand times she has imagined this conversation, and she can’t find for him _anything_ to say.

Her own silence is deafening, rushing in her ears.

“Satine-?”

She flinches and fumbles, her teacup clattering as she abandons it and sends her fingers searching instead for what she’s brought him, for this, because she can-

She can _show_ him.

She has holo-pics. She finds the holodisk on her person and all but shoves it at him, proving that the blood between sisters will out when she presses it into his startled hand and clamps down until it activates in his palm and blurts; “You’ll figure it out,” in a quiet, tremulous rush.

The first image on the holodisk flickers to life between them, all bright lines tinged with blue. Lin Mereel took this one a day or so after Korkie was born, of Satine looking flush and exhausted still, her hair loose around her face and glowing in the sunlight from the window, her newborn in her arms swaddled in lilac knit, both of them looking at the camera in slightly reproachful surprise.

Satine can’t breathe.

She had thought _her_ silence was deafening.

His was _worse_.

He studies the image, concerned curiosity morphing into confusion as a small furrow appears in his brow. The confusion fades slowly, as opposed to breaking all at once, and his gaze flits over details, taking them in with that same tenacious, steely-edged calculation that had defined his _baji’buir_ in the war room. The critical lines in his expression fall away, eyes blinking slightly wider as he draws in a slow, quiet breath.

“ _Oh_ ,” he exhales.


	6. Chapter 6

Obi-Wan stares at the holopic until it superimposes over everything else in his senses, in his mind, his fingers half-curled around the holodisk.

Satine and… a baby.

A baby in a Kryze lilac knit. A very, very _new_ baby. So odds are…

 _Satine’s_ baby.

A prickly, energetic tension crawls through his bones, half hope and half terror-

“Is… they are… mine?” he looks up, realizing in that moment what he _wants_ the answer to be, even though the part of his mind that is still trying to find all the edges to all the puzzle pieces screams about how very complicated and difficult that would make things.

But _oh_.

Satine’s sharp brow drops low and her mouth drops open, half surprise and half rebuke written all over her face. “Yes,” she utters simply, and closes her mouth, still pale with nerves.

Obi-Wan nods faintly. “And they’re… they’re okay?” he asks, quietly terrified of the answer, because… well, she’s never been seen with a child, has she?

Her eyes are brimming wetly, and she nods quickly, a flash of horror skittering through the Force as she realizes that may have even been a concern. “Yes.”

Obi-Wan takes a rapid breath and nods, and stares at the picture again.

“There – there’s more,” Satine says, voice quietly shaken. “ on the disc.”

Obi-Wan brushes his fingers along the dial edge, and the image flickers, another one taking its place. Baby sleeping in a bassinet. Baby sleeping on a blanket. Baby in a lilac knit hat. Baby in a white hat. Baby in a teal hat. Baby scowling. Chewing on their fist-

“I – “

“It’s a girl,” Satine explains, reading the questions off his face. “I named her Korkie.”

Obi-Wan lets out a puff of air. “ _Stargazer_ ,” he remembers. He has to cover his mouth with his other hand. Surprisingly, his hand is much steadier than he feels.

The images flicker through rapid, nearly indiscernible stages of growth; cheeks filling out, hair filling in – her mother’s light silver-blonde, it appears. Tiny, thin hands turning into tiny, chubby hands. Her eyes have a somber set to them, the color an uncertain blue slowly resolving into a clearer, sharper shade – like his, perhaps, when she’s older. Her gaze is very focused, in many of the pictures. Korkie is frequently scowling. She looks a bit like Bo-Katan when she does.

There are pictures of her chewing on anything and everything from her own fingers to bits of cloth, to soft baby toys, to what looks like spare droid parts, to plasma clips and expensive looking pieces of jewelry.

Small footage-clips of her learning to roll over, red faced and angry as she flips from her tummy to her back and then gaping with shock when she succeeds and bursting into tearful wails. Bobbing unsteadily as she learns to sit up, piled in pillows. Scooting across the floor. Falling on her face as she learns to crawl (Bo-Katan letting out a swear in the background). Climbing drapes and furniture and people’s legs as she learns to pull herself up and stand. Spitting bubbles and babbling to herself. Bouncing with hiccups. Sitting under a table and scooting away from Bo-Katan’s attempts to pull her out, singing ‘No-no-no!’ at her irate aunt and giggling.

“Obi-Wan?”

He drags his gaze back over to her, blinking at how blurry she is before realizing that he’s not just having trouble focusing. He wipes the tears away and swallows tightly. He heart, he hadn’t noticed, is hammering away. “You –“ his voice falters a little, and he clears his throat. “You aren’t in very many of these.”

Her expression shutters, and she looks away. “No,” she says, “I’m not. How could I be?”

 _How could I be_?

He thinks of the tremendous effort she has undertaken in trying to pull Mandalore back together; in pulling up the remaining roots of _Kyr’tsad_ and salting their dangerous legacy to prevent a resurgence, another civil war; in reuniting the shattered factions and worlds of Mandalore and trying to build something that might survive and sustain the aftermath.

“I could have…” he trails off, staring at her helplessly, and she at him, and they both know that _no_ , he couldn’t have. But he _would_ have, and that’s why she did not – _could not_ – tell him.

He lets out a breath, and it feels terrible.

“I’m sorry,” Satine says. “We promised.”

She had made him promise that he would not break his vows to the jedi for her. He had made her promise the same – that she would not forsake her duty to her people for her feelings for him.

Because they both knew they would, and they both loved each other too much for who and what they were to allow it.

Maybe someday – when both their peoples were a little further from the brink edge of destruction, when they weren’t so inimitably tied to their respective revolutions for progress and their people’s chances of survival.

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan agrees softly. “I’m so sorry.”

For the accident of having a child, for not knowing, for not being there, for the fact that she barely had the chance to be there for their daughter either.

Satine just shakes her head and takes a drink of her lukewarm tea.

“Where… where is she? Where does she live?” Obi-Wan asks, after a quiet moment, taking a sip of tea himself – bitter and oversteeped, by now. He barely tastes it anyways.

“She spent most of her first year on Lin Mereel’s homestead with Bo-Katan,” Satine explains, all exhausted tension and quiet, bittersweet relief. Obi-Wan reaches for her hand and she startles, at first, and then slides her fingers into his and squeezes.

“I didn’t think Bo-Katan would be good with children,” he remarks, a little surprised.

Satine snorts a dry laugh. “She isn’t. She handles a baby about the same way one handles a bomb, but in spite of everything… she _is_ my sister. She’s family.”

The throbbing bruises on his face can certainly attest to that, he supposes, lips quirking.

“ _Mand’alor_ has all but taken Korkie in now, though,” she draws in a half-breath, her feelings on the matter a tangle of clashing irritation and gratitude. “It scares me, having her out in the world, but… I see her more, if she’s with him, and I know what he’d do to keep her safe. It’s…. bearable. He’s been…” her fingers tighten, and Obi-Wan brushes his thumb across her hand. She lets out a breath. “ _Kind_. I’ve known him for years and I am still surprised that he is not always the man I expected him to be.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t think he himself is entirely surprised – Jango was an intense and violently inclined individual, but even knowing Obi-Wan was a jedi, he’d saved the young padawan on that spice frigate years ago. He’d even come back around to train him later. He wasn’t a soft man, that didn’t mean he didn’t have a soft spot in him for kids, didn’t have a desire to protect and teach, to watch them grow, to help them learn and overcome.

He doesn’t entirely know how to feel about the idea that Jango had all but adopted Obi-Wan and Satine’s child, though. Sad, perhaps. Relieved, maybe. His feelings on the matter generally echo Satine’s, blending into hers in the space of the galley – gratitude and upset, joy and regret, all chasing each other around in circles.

“I want to meet her,” Obi-Wan blurts out, after another drawn moment of reeling contemplation, his hand in Satine’s his only touchstone to the world.

“Of course,” Satine agrees rapidly, almost stumbling over her words. “I expected- I just wasn’t sure- but, of course.”

He’s never heard her so ineloquent, and it is as charming, he thinks, as it is heartbreaking. He doesn’t like this – that she feels small, that she feels herself diminished, for this. For the choices she’s had to make.

He _understands_.

“You know I love you,” he says.

Satine blinks widely at him, her eyes watering again.

“Yes,” she says quietly, and for all she holds her head up and her shoulders square, he can feel her entire being trembling in the Force.

“I love you,” Obi-Wan repeats resolutely, cupping her hand in both of his and letting her _feel_ it, just a bit, the way _he_ feels it. How it runs to the very core of his understanding of himself, how it lingers in the air when he thinks of her, when he misses her, how it burns fiercely when he looks at her, and fills every corner of him with brimming light when he holds her, when he kisses her-

Satine swallows, staring at him, and her tears spill over. She draws her hand back and covers her face. “I know,” she says, half a sob. “I know. I’ve just been so _scared_.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan murmurs, and moves around the galley, around the counter so that he can fold her into his arms and press his brow against her hair. “It’s okay,” he whispers, his voice catching slightly as the sheer intensity of how _overwhelmed_ she has been floods into him. “It’s okay,” he promises again. _It’s okay_ , he tells himself. _It’s okay. It’s okay._

His heart aches. It _hurts_ – all of this, every little bit of it. Even the joy of it hurts, because it costs them both so much.

She leans into him and scrubs at her face, irritation at herself rising as it almost always does when she cries. She sniffles primly, fighting for composure and winning. She takes a deep breath, shuddering with it, then another, and another, and Obi-Wan holds her tightly, trying not to hold her _too_ tightly, even if he wants to keep pulling her in, even if he wishes he could hold her in his arms and keep her there, for once. He wants to be selfish.

He can’t be.

His eyes burn. He’ll let himself give in to that, he thinks. Later, on his own, when it won’t break the both of them if he does. He copies her breathing, deep and shaken - and a little easier each time.

“What do we do now?” Satine asks eventually, sounding worn, the counter digging into their ribs and neither of them quite willing to move even so.

Obi-Wan takes a slower, softer breath in, breathing in the soft scent of her hair, the gentle perfume lingering on her skin, something warm and crisp that he can’t quite name. He hums softly, closing his eyes, surety of what he _wants_ to say sinking into his bones, chasing out misery.

 _We could find a cord and a crowd_ , he wants to say. She might say _yes_ , this time, their feelings all laid out and raw.

They can’t.

Too many social and political ramifications, especially for the _Jorad’alor_ of Mandalore. The situation is better on Mandalore, but it’s not quite ready for something like that, yet.

Another _maybe someday_ , he thinks. He wants his _somedays_ so badly.

“We could go see her?” Obi-Wan says instead, reigning in his impulses, focusing on what he _can_ have for now.

Satine stirs a little, turning to look at him, brushing nose to nose. “She’s all the way in-“

“Keldabe, if she’s with _Mand’alor_ ,” Obi-Wan acknowledges, nodding and pressing his brow into hers, closing his eyes. “I can get us there.”

Satine takes in a sharp breath and nods against him. “Okay,” she agrees in a whisper, all painful hope at the unexpected opportunity.

~*~

Ben takes hold of the toddler and frowns at Jango, while adjusting her against his chest without dropping the helmet.

 _Korkie Kryze_ , he thinks. _I know that name_.

“Satine’s…” he trails off. _Niece_ , he thought.

 _Nephew_ , he recalls. A boy with broad shoulders and a touch of red to his hair and a look reminisce of Adonai Kryze, though in that time Ben had never met Duke Kryze, only setting foot in the Mandalorian Sector _after_ his assassination.

He had, in so far as he was aware of the boy before Satine’s death, assumed Korkie Kryze was Bo-Katan’s offspring.

It had made sense, right up until he called Bo-Katan ‘Aunt’ too.

But any consideration for that niggling, uncertain mystery was clouded by grief, and further lost in the fervor of war.

It had made sense then. It doesn’t now.

If this child were Bo-Katan’s, her last name would be _Fett_.

 _Unless Satine adopted her?_ Bo-Katan was not – and this is perhaps uncharitable but nonetheless true – what he would consider a particularly parental nor motherly individual.

It’s also entirely possible that the child is simply an orphan of Clan Kryze, taken in by either of them, but he thinks his heart wouldn’t be thudding so heavily if that were so – he wouldn’t be so reluctant to take a closer look at her face, and Jango Fett would not be waiting with such _disgruntled_ anticipation for Ben to react.

If Jango gives an order, it’s a silent one, but between the moment Jango shoved the princess into his arms and the moment Ben lost the trail of his thoughts, the courtyard had very efficiently been emptied of excess personnel, leaving the two of them – the _three_ of them, that is – to their privacy.

“Look at her face and tell me you don’t know _exactly_ whose child that is,” Jango demands, crossing his arms.

Ben lets his eyes fall shut. He takes a breath.

“ _Vod_ ,” Jango warns, and Ben nods tightly.

He looks.

Satine’s sharp brow, that straight-edged _Kryze_ nose. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s enviable cheekbones and dimples and familiar ears. Not exactly the same features as the young man he remembers. But similar enough to answer a question he had not been brave enough to ask.

Ben sucks in a breath and carefully, gently cradles the girl to his chest, tucking his face next to hers in a very soft hug.

“Oh boy,” Jango mutters, swearing under his breath.

Korkie squirms, shoving the helmet to the ground and pushing on his face. “No!” she pouts, digging her feet into his gut and turning her face away. “No scratch!”

Ben lifts his head and frowns, perplexed. “Sorry?” he inquires, voice half-failing him as he does, and he swallows against that.

“She doesn’t like stubble,” Jango snorts, explaining and rubbing his own clean-shaven face. “It’s too scratchy.”

“Oh,” Ben utters, his composed façade feeling very, very thin at the moment. “Oh, I see.”

Jango gives him a sharp look. “ _Vod_.”

Ben draws in a breath and tucks all the rapidly spiraling edges of his emotions in and away. He can do this, draw all his pain in and hide it somewhere deep and shadowed and out of the way until the job gets done.

The only problem is that he doesn’t know what the job is, at the moment, and he is just left standing there instead, in the edge of the rain, holding Obi-Wan Kenobi’s daughter.

His very squirmy, damp daughter.

She scowls up at him. “Down!” she says firmly, in a passable imitation of Jango’s irritably clipped tones.

“How about _inside_ ,” Jango, in his exact irritably clipped tones, suggests instead. “You need food and a bath and then a _bed_ , _ad’alor_.”

She looks at the _Mand’alor_ , grumpily and reproachfully, and then turns back to Ben and offers a wide, dimpled, _adorable_ smile. “Down?” she asks sweetly, putting her hands under her chin and snuggling against his chest without breaking eye contact.

“Lin fucking Mereel,” Jango curses his cousin – whom Ben assumes taught this particular tactic to the princess - and points a warning finger at the girl. “ _No_.”

She doesn’t pay him any mind, utterly focused on Ben until Ben gives her an answer.

“I- I’m afraid not,” Ben manages to say.

She, thwarted, heaves a too-big sigh for her body and then flops, abruptly boneless, in his arms. He nearly drops her, trying to wrangle her limbs while she apparently half converts to liquid, as malleable as an octopus and utterly unhelpful. He manages, if only just.

She starts to cry, pitifully and tiredly and then with forced effort.

Ben, holding her securely, does _not_ readjust his grip to give her the opportunity to throw herself to the ground. He has had _extensive_ dealings with toddlers. He bounces her gently instead and tries to answer her prickly feelings with calm and comfort in the Force.

It’s a bit difficult for him to summon up, at present, but he _manages_.

Korkie, however, is very determined, forcing the sobs out with pitiful wails.

Jango sighs roughly, scrubbing a hand through his hair and then stooping for his helmet with a grumbling mutter.

They go inside.


	7. Chapter 7

The household staff of Keldabe Stronghold are diligent and know their duties well. And they are very aware of this, as Ben observes that they seem to work _around_ Jango Fett, more than any perceptible notion of working _for_ Jango Fett. Some of them, Ben is aware, have worked in Keldabe Stronghold most of their lives – survivors of the firebombing, who worked here during Duke Kryze’s time, during _Manda’lor_ Mereel’s, some even before that.

A sharp-eared, gimlet-eyed sephi-descended matron who, by her manner of dress and the deference she is given, has clearly been raising the babies of Keldabe Stronghold for generations, meets them in the _Mand’alor’s_ private wing with a click of her tongue and swiftly assigns which attendants are to dry Korkie off, which are to get her fed, and who is responsible for the bath.

“ _Mand’alor_ ,” she greets last, levelling him with an expectant expression that is regally imposing in the way only elderly women galaxy over seem capable of; all poised warning, daring young men to test their mettle and fail.

“Matron Juul,” Jango replies, tone low and contentiously respectful. He gestures to Ben, and Korkie kick her legs from his arms.

“Ju’ju! Ju’ju!”

The matron cuts her gaze from the _Mand’alor_ and alights on the child, and all her cold regality vanishes into an indulgent smile, her face folding into warm lines of paper-thin, pale violet skin.

Ben dumbly hands the toddler over, as that is clearly what she is waiting for. Once Matron Juul has Korkie securely in arms, she rakes Ben up and down with sharp, skeptical look and then offers him the slightest of accepting nods. She then vanishes and takes the household staff with her.

Jango blows out a breath. “That woman terrifies me,” he mutters.

Ben blinks at him incredulously, half his senses still following the small, glowing presence that was Korkie Kryze out the door. “The _nanny_ terrifies you?”

Jango gives him a strange look. “I was barely of age for training when Jaster Mereel took me in. She never quite forgives any of us for growing up, and I was worse ‘cause I was so old when she got me and gone again as soon as I could get my _buir_ to take me with him.”

Ben can’t help the half-smirk that crosses his face. “She was _your_ nanny?”

Jango glares at him and stalks out of the hall and into his private quarters, Ben following, though he has to force his feet to move. He feels short of breath, and there is a buzzing white noise low in the back of his mind, swallowing half his thoughts. He anticipates a conversation he doesn’t think he wants to have.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to offer me a drink?” Ben inquires.

Jango snorts derisively and points him to a small seating area, two squat chairs opposite each other over a small table that looks set up for _cubikad_. “Not unless you’re asking for tea or _shig_.”

Ben swallows, grateful and slightly irritated that Jango has apparently decided he’s not going to indulge Ben’s bad habits. “That’s fine,” he replies, leaving it up to Jango, who grunts in acknowledgement and sends off a comm code for someone to fetch something. Then he sheds his upper armor and trades a rather ornamental black-and-maroon silk undershirt for a plainer, more comfortable-looking grey one.

A tea service is delivered, handed off by one of Jango’s young bodyguards who is _not at all_ discreet in trying to get a look into the room - only to get his bucket smacked for being nosy.

“Have a _good_ evening, _Mand’alor_!” he chirps suggestively, utterly unphased, before retreating.

“These fucking brats,” Jango mutters, carrying the tray over and shooting a glare through the closed door.

“They seem loyal,” Ben offers, pouring Jango a cup and then himself, the scent of the steam heady with spices and citrus.

Jango snorts, taking a drink of his tea, which is no doubt scalding, Ben muses, and reflexively frowning a little in displeasure. Likely, he wishes it _were_ alcoholic, but he has apparently decided to show some solidarity on that front. Ben quietly appreciates the effort, feeling only a little mortified that it is, perhaps, so very much something he _needs_.

Ben takes a sip, the flavor strong on his pallet and very warming as it slides down his gullet.

“So,” Jango starts, bluntly and blatantly, and Ben feels his eyes drift closed, bracing himself. “Korkie Kryze.”

“I didn’t expect it,” Ben murmurs, a little mulishly. He’d been looking forward to this visit, and this is not how he saw it going.

Jango scoffs, “No shit.”

Ben opens his eyes to offer him a reproachful glare.

Jango is unimpressed.

“You didn’t have a kid, then, I take it,” Jango states, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair, leant back into it, almost sprawled.

Ben smiles bitterly. “I think I _did_ ,” he utters, the worlds crawling up his throat, coming out hoarse and brittle. “And right up until you introduced _her_ , I didn’t know it.”

Jango’s abrupt, pained silence is worse than his swearing.

Ben takes an unhappy breath, staring at the wall past Jango’s shoulder, unable to meet his eyes, and continues, filling the awaiting, expectant silence. “Except the Korkie Kryze I knew was already a young man by the time we ever met, and we never had more than half a conversation between us. He was introduced to me as her nephew.” Ben stops, and the simple facts sits there, mocking him.

Ahsoka had spoken of him once, and Ben had been amused that Satine’s nephew seemed just as righteous-hearted and stubborn and looking for trouble as she had been as a youth.

Ben had met him, and they’d barely spoken. Ben had barely even _looked_ at him, grieving and shamefully guilty for Satine’s death as he had been.

“He…” his voice strains, cracks, and Ben gives up all pretenses, letting the cup rattle out of his fingers and rest on the table, leaning forward to bury his face in his hands and feel the past try and claw its way out of the shadows of his mind, scratching out new scars on his soul. “He lived a life, _vod_ , and now he _doesn’t exist_. Won’t exist.” Ben scrubs at his face, looking up with achingly dry eyes. “I had a son,” he utters, making it real, trying to accept it, trying to let it go. “And I have missed his entire life twice over.”

Jango looks like he deeply regrets his decision to forgo alcohol.

“Is it better or worse than murder,” Ben inquires with scornful, vitriolic bitterness; with despair. “ That my actions utterly _unmake_ their lives?”

He’d made a choice, with the clone troopers, with Cody and Rex and all _three million_ _and more_ of their brothers, and most days he knows how to live with that choice, but this – this had been an _accident_ , and it was irrevocable.

“It’s not the same as dying,” Jango says roughly, echoing the sentiment Ben has told himself over and over and over.

“It’s not the same as never being born, either,” Ben snaps tiredly. “I _remember_ them.”

“You’re the only one,” Jango retorts, and snaps his jaw shut so hard afterwards that Ben can hear his teeth click. They stare at each other, both of them just a little bit horrified, and just a little bit hateful.

Jango won’t apologize. They both know that.

Jango breaks his gaze away first, though, scrubbing a hand over his face and shifting forward, leaning closer but still glowering off to the side. “Look, Ben. _Vod_. I don’t know what to fucking tell you. You live with it. You’ve got no choice. If all they are is a memory, _remember them_. Say their litany. What more do you expect to be able to do?” Jango demands of him. “You’ve got lives that are still _here_ to look out for,” he lifts his gaze, locking glares with Ben, and Ben…

Ben is the one to look down, this time, sick with grief, sick with pain, sick with loathing for it all, for himself. He’s tired, all at once.

“I know,” he sighs, head bowed. Jango shifts out of his chair, pressing a knee to the floor and dropping a hand on the back of Ben’s neck, lowering his head and pressing his brow to the crown of Ben’s hair, letting out a huff that ruffles his fringe.

Ben shudders, reaches for him, pulls into the embrace, borrowing some of Jango’s burning heat – both physical and emotional - to press back the chill he feels in his soul.

“I know,” he repeats, the ever-present danger lurking behind him an inescapable hungry maw, the eyes of the Sith glaring out of it, threatening everything he dares to hold dear, getting closer day by day, so close he sometimes dreams he can feel their hot, putrid breath at the back of his neck.

“You and all your banthashite – you are a fucking disaster, you know that? _Shu’shuk_ ,” Jango growls, grip on his neck painful and grounding.

“I know,” Ben huffs a little helplessly, “ but I’m in good company.”

“Fuck you, I’ve got my shit in order.”

“Your _Jorad’alor_ has your _shit_ in order,” Ben corrects, tone full of coruscanti prissiness. “That’s cheating.”

“ _I’m_ the one whose cheating?” Jango backs up to give him the full force of how absolutely fucking appalling that accusation is, coming from _Ben_. “You-“

A carefully cleared throat interrupts him, and they both jerk for a weapon before they recognize their intruders.

Obi-Wan holds his hands up in surrender, expression bemused, Satine sheltered behind him and peering over his shoulder with very judgmentally raised brows. “Are we…. interrupting?”

“Anything you damn well _interrupt_ when you fucking _teleport_ into my bedroom is on you, _jed’ika_. What kind of fucking question is that?” Jango uses Ben’s shoulder to push himself to his feet and points a warning hand at Satine Kryze. “And you, Satine Kryze - _never barge into my bedroom again._ What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I wanted to meet Korkie,” Obi-Wan states, not at all apologetically, but neither of them miss the raw scrape under the words. Ben can’t perceive much through Obi-Wan’s impressive shields, but his face is easy enough to read, and his thoughts and feelings all too easy to surmise.

There is no quick reply to that, the silence thick between the four of them, and then Jango moves and fetches his comm, delivering an order for Korkie to be brought back to him for bath-time.

She must have already been done with her supper, because she arrives quickly after that.

Jango has marched back across the room and thrown himself into a chair, finishing his tea. Satine had sat on the _Mand’alor’s_ bed, earned a ferocious glare for it, and abruptly stood up again, and it was she who crossed to the door when Matron Juul arrives.

“Nanny!” Satine greets her brightly and earns an almost approving nod in return as the toddler is handed over. Korkie clings to the matron’s shirt, whining.

Ben and Obi-Wan both try not to flinch at the heartbreak the young mother bleeds, for being all but a stranger to her own child.

Matron Juul extracts the child’s hands and then offers a small consoling touch on Satine’s shoulder before tapping her chin, making Satine lift it. It must be a familiar gesture, because Satine lifts her chin and squares her shoulders and _breathes_ , composure wrapping around her like a shield. She nods, breathing out with resolve, and Matron Juul departs without questions.

Satine turns around, Korkie slouched in her arms and pouting – lip stuck out and her cheeks puffed up – and Satine glances between the three men who are rather unhelpfully just staring at her.

She narrows her eyes at Ben and Jango and then looks to Obi-Wan, full of trepidation. They stare blankly at each other, and then Obi-Wan looks down. Korkie peers at him, leaning into Satine for safety when confronted with _another_ stranger.

Obi-Wan’s smile is very soft and achingly gentle. “Hello, Korkie. I’m…. Obi-Wan.”

Everyone is holding their breath.

~*~

Obi-Wan feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest, hope and anticipation skittering through his bones like sparklers.

 _She looks like me_ , he thinks. She looks like him, and like Satine. She looks like both of them, and like neither of them. Her brow is definitely her mothers. Her cheekbones are definitely his. Her nose looks familiar, but not quite the same, and her jaw and chin are indeterminate. Her skin is very fair – both her parents were, after all – but it has more of the honey-peach undertones that his skin has, as opposed to the porcelain-ivory tones of Satine’s. He wonders if that means she’d get freckles in the sun like he does.

Her gaze is very focused, and her brow scrunches up skeptically – and the expression is too much like Bo-Katan’s, he can’t help noticing ruefully.

Her emotions are wobbly in the Force, but loud, all _tired-cranky-confused_. She’s Force Sensitive, he can feel that gossamer-like brush of her own presence reaching out, seeking, but not nearly Force-Sensitive enough that the temple would have taken her in. Maybe when she was older, if that potential grew over time, like Shmi. Surprisingly, he finds he isn’t at all disappointed about it. He doesn’t think it even really crossed his mind, taking her back to the Alderaan. What would be the point? He’d only be trading situations with Satine; he the close but oft-absent parent, she the one at a distance.

He reaches out very carefully to that gossamer edge of her instinctive awareness, trying to show her warmth and safety and care without overwhelming her with his feelings, without pressuring her with them either.

He thinks he does a decent job of it. Korkie relaxes – her mother does too, enveloped in that cocoon with her – her baby scowl fading into droopy calm as she slouches in Satine’s arms, blinking back sleepiness. “Mng,” she grunts, wriggling impatiently.

Obi-Wan puffs a small laugh, hiding a quiet ache. He can’t expect her to be pleased to see him. She doesn’t know him.

“’Mng’ to you too,” Obi-Wan replies warmly, blinking a few times to clear the stinging from his eyes. “Would you like a bath now?”

Korkie blinks at him, then twists around to look at Jango, sucking on her lip. Jango lifts a brow and points back at Obi-Wan. Korkie turns back around, and Satine shifts her grip, the toddler getting heavy. Obi-Wan offers Satine a quick, apologetic glance. He’d try to take her, but he wasn’t sure that was wise just yet. He was afraid of upsetting her in trying.

“Baph mon-ster,” Korkie says seriously, nodding.

Obi-Wan and Satine both glance at Jango for clarification.

“Have fun with that,” he tells them.


End file.
